I adore geography. But even if you don’t, this is a super fun, unschooly and simple way to study the continents.
A few years ago I started focusing on geography in the summers, alongside keeping up with the kids’ language arts and math progress. This past summer, I decided to spend a week or two on each continent. Yes, that means we continued it a bit into the fall when we started regular school. But that worked just fine! We found some amazing resources and programs to complement each continent and even lined it up with the summer Olympics. If you are like us and want to make things flow naturally with your life, holidays and other events, consider planning each continent around your family life. For instance, we did Asia right around the time of the summer Olympics since Tokyo was hosting the 2020 summer Olympics (though in 2021). Likewise, we did North America around the Fourth of July. Naturally, studying the continents brings with it some study of the countries that make up those continents. My advice is to go easy in the younger years and give them a 30,000 ft. view and just a few more in-depth examples. What you teach each year will build on itself and you will see it all start to come together for them as the years progress.
North America
We love attending the Independence Day parade up in Breckenridge each year. The town does a great job with a living history shootout on Main Street in the middle of the parade, and a reading of the Declaration of Independence. So we chose to study North America around that time. I also signed my preschoolers up for a local Christian school’s summer camp that happened to be focusing on different countries throughout the summer. We were able to sign up for a week at a time and I chose two weeks for them to attend, one of which was when they were studying America during our North America study. They made amazing cardboard cars for drive-in movies, had their own red, white and blue bike parade, made apple pie, and did beautiful flag finger paintings. I had signed my oldest up for a golf camp that week so it all lined up perfectly. I also purchased a set of printable Guess Who cards from Shop Modern Classical on Etsy, themed on the seven continents. We did these for North America and some of the other continents we studied (but not all of them, as I wanted to keep things fresh). Games are always a win in our homeschool! It wouldn’t be complete without some North America books from our library. We started out with an overview of the continents with books like Show Me the Continents by Pamela Dell, Counting the Continents by Ellen Mitten, and Earth’s Continents by Todd Bluthenthal. Then we enjoyed North America by Karen Kellaher (from the True Book Seven Continents Series), the Mapping the Continents Series, and Predators of North America by Michael Tylers (from the World’s Scariest Predators series) because, yep! we are an all-boy homeschool and it wouldn’t be complete without some scary predators to study. We rounded off North America with the Brother Bear movie. We all had a blast, Mama included!
South America
My kids love cooking with me and I’d been longing to try out Raddish Kids. Our continent unit study was the perfect time to give it a try. I selected a few boxes including the Bites from Brazil kit for our South America study (and I just learned they now have Continental Bundles!). We really embraced all of the amazing things included in the kit so it took us a 3-4 hour block. But before you walk away discouraged, let me tell you there is good reason for the time commitment. The Brazil kit included lessons about Carnival, a video Samba dance lesson, instruction on how to make Carnival masks, and authentic music with a special Spotify playlist they created for the kit. Our kids pulled out their maracas and we had a blast. It’s definitely not all cooking! But we certainly enjoyed the delicious authentic Brazilian food. The kit also included Table Talk cards for fun discussion while you eat and a lesson on Brazil. Another fun addition to our study was a project I pulled from my own keepsake bin. When I was a kid, my grandpa traveled to Bolivia and had quite a wild trip. I chose to write a report about it and he recorded a tape telling me about his adventures. I read my report to my children and we all listened to the tape together. I showed them the woven rug Paw Paw brought me home from Bolivia when I was young that graces the floor of our Reading Room. We gathered there to view our wall to wall mural of the world map with this and each continent study. Ah, the things homeschool dreams are made of… LOL To round out our study, we checked out books from the library again from the same series, played South America Guess Who and finished up with the movie Rio 2 which takes place during Carnival. I can’t even capture the ridiculous excitement I have about all of this.
Australia
For our Australia study, I signed my little boys up for another camp studying the country/continent while my oldest attended VBS. The little boys had Australian snacks and brought home such amazing crafts for Australia including the flag, a coral reef finger painting, and cute kangaroo cups complete with a little baby Roo. We checked out the Australia books from the same great series at the library and picked out some fun Wild Kratts episodes about Australian animals to watch. It was our shortest study, but hey that’s fitting for the smallest continent, right?
Asia
I planned our Asia study to kick off with start of Olympics in Tokyo. I printed off some fun Olympics coloring pages from Scribblefun.com and we discussed what the Olympics are, where they were, and why. We then threw an opening ceremony pizza party in our unfinished (at the time) basement. It was so much fun to watch the countries parading in as our kids competed to be the first to identify the countries of all the flags they saw. And it was of course quite an experience for us as parents to see empty stands and covered faces at one of the largest worldwide events. Historical to be sure. We read the Asia versions of the books we had been checking out from the library as well of course. We finished up with the fun kids’ movie Space Dogs, about the Russian dogs that were sent to space.
Antarctica
One of my favorite things about our continent unit study was finding an awesome series of books called Survival Tails. For our Antarctica study, we checked out the one in the series entitled The Story of the Endurance. Its a fun collection of historical fiction books (my fave!) written from the perspective of the animals that may or not been around during those times. We first discovered this series when my oldest was interested in Titanic. And this story about the ship Endurance was equally exciting. We love read-alouds and this was a wonderful way to kick off our Antarctica study. We of course checked out the books in our continent series too. At about this time, my kids started up one of their enrichment programs for the fall and got a great refresher on the Continents and the big picture of what we were studying together.
Africa
My uncle lived in Morocco for many years, so I jumped at the chance to add the Raddish Kids Made in Morocco kit to our Africa study. The boys really enjoy slowing down to take time to learn about a specific cooking skill and tool (which they send along with the kit!). It was especially neat though to share with the boys about my uncle’s time there and also send photos back to him of our culinary masterpieces. We made Moroccan Chicken Tangine, Orange Blossom Tea Cakes, and Kefta rolls. Delicious! My uncle applauded their efforts and sent us back a photo he took during his last trip back to Morocco. We checked out our library books as usual and added a fun Africa coloring page from coloring.ws. I remember as a kid having fun identifying all the countries on the map of Africa (though I became keenly aware that I could not do so now) and my boys loved coloring each unique shape in bright colors to distinguish them.
Europe
We finished up our continent unit with Europe. I printed out a map of the European countries and flags from homeschoolden.com and the kids had fun picking a flag and finding it on the map where we’d then go on to identify the country. Anything can be a game if you add taking turns and taking your pick from a group of items LOL Along with our continent series from the library, we also began a new series of books from Generations.org. I purchased the second grade read-aloud set and we read the biography of Robert Murray Mc’Cheyne. We followed along in my boys’ world atlas book as we read the story about his travels through Scotland and beyond. The kids also studied Italy in more depth with our Raddish Kids Mangia! Mangia! cooking kit. We bought a new favorite game which brought it all together, Ticket to Ride Europe. I’ve done a couple trips to Europe myself and the kids are learning French so we enjoyed the natural conversations those things inspired as we played Ticket to Ride, cooked our meals, and read our books.
It was an incredible summer of fun and memories as we made our way through the seven continents. My children learned so much in way that just fed their love of learning. It was also a perfect start to their fall enrichment program where they learned more about the early modern era and the colonists coming to North America. I highly recommend an imaginative journey through the seven continents during your summer if you are looking for some fun!
